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Posts
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By Copernic · Posted
XnConvert 1.112 by Razvan Serea XnConvert is a cross-platform batch image-converter and resizer with a powerful and ease of use experience. All common picture and graphics formats are supported (i.e. JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, Camera RAW, JPEG2000, WebP, OpenEXR) as well as supporting over 500 other image formats. Also available within the batch operations include rotating, adding of watermarks, adding of text along with many image-adjustment features such as brightness, shadows and more. Among the features included are: Batch adding of files and folders Support for drag and drop of files Batch rotating, cropping, resizing and more Adding of photo masks Preserving or removing image metadata in conversions Multipage image file support (i.e animated GIF, APNG, TIFF) Command line integration via NConvert Filters - such as 'Blur', 'Gaussian Blur', 'Emboss', "Sharpen' and much more Effects - such as 'Old camera' and much more Download: XnConvert 64-bit | Standalone | ~30.0 MB (Freeware) Download: XnConvert 32-bit | Standalone Links: XnConvert Website | Screenshot | Release Announcement Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware -
By zikalify · Posted
Microsoft updates Visual Studio Code with chat cost tracking and multi-agent chats by Paul Hill Microsoft has just launched Visual Studio Code 1.126, its latest weekly release. This time, the company has focused on letting you see the total cost of chat sessions to spot expensive conversations; enabling multiple chats per session that run side-by-side in one agent host Copilot session; and letting you browse new folders safely in restricted mode. We have now reached the stage where free AI in IDEs is coming to an end. To help you keep track of your costs, VS Code now lets you see the entire cost of a chat session, rather than just individual turns. This should give you more transparency about which sessions consume the most credits, so you can better manage your usage over time and spend less. For those of you using the Agents window, you know it is possible to run and manage multiple agent sessions at once. In this update, a Copilot session started from an agent host can hold several chats at once. Explaining how this feature works, Microsoft writes: Finally, from this update forward, Microsoft will remove the pop-up when opening an untrusted folder. When you open a new folder now, it will automatically open in Restricted Mode. You will see a banner that lets you manage the trust level of the folder. Microsoft has made this change so that it’s easier to start inspecting code without giving it trust right away. If you have VS Code, you can check for updates within the app now to get this new version. Otherwise, you can download it from the Visual Studio Code website. -
By Karthik Mudaliar · Posted
Anthropic accuses Alibaba of using 25,000 fake accounts to copy Claude's capabilities by Karthik Mudaliar Anthropic has accused Alibaba of using nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to extract capabilities from Claude on a huge scale. According to a report from Reuters, Anthropic told US lawmakers that operators linked to Alibaba and the company’s Qwen AI team generated 28.8 million exchanges with Claude between April 22 and June 5, 2026. That is a lot of Claude conversations, but Anthropic says this was not ordinary chatbot use. The company believes the accounts were part of a coordinated effort to collect answers that could help train or improve rival AI systems. The alleged campaign reportedly focused on some of Claude’s most valuable skills, including software development, multi-step reasoning, and agentic tasks. In practical terms, that means getting an AI model to plan and complete work across several stages rather than simply answering a single question. This is called 'distillation,' where AI companies use outputs from a larger model to train a smaller and cheaper one. The smaller model learns to imitate useful parts of the more capable system without needing the same amount of computing power. The distillation process isn't automatically suspicious, but the problem comes when one company gathers another provider's outputs without permission and at an industrial scale. Also, this does not mean Alibaba obtained Claude’s source code, model weights, or original training data. Instead, Anthropic claims the accounts repeatedly asked Claude carefully designed questions and collected the answers. Those answers could then be used as training material for another model. Anthropic has made similar accusations against DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax earlier this year. As Neowin previously reported, Anthropic said those three companies collectively generated more than 16 million Claude exchanges through roughly 24,000 accounts. Anthropic says the new campaign produced almost twice as many exchanges in a matter of weeks. Anthropic reportedly told lawmakers that the campaign could help Chinese AI developers approach the capabilities of its Mythos Preview model. Mythos is focused on advanced cybersecurity work, including finding and exploiting complex software vulnerabilities. via Reuters | Photo via DepositPhotos.com -
By +TRS-80 · Posted
An Indian manufacturer that assembles roughly one-third of Apple's iPhones and supplies semiconductor components to Tesla confirmed Monday that attackers had stolen and publicly published a 630-gigabyte cache of confidential files — including engineering blueprints stamped "TRADE SECRET," a 52-page quality inspection document for iPhone circuit board components, and cryptographic certificates that security experts say could be weaponized in follow-on attacks. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/319019/20260624/apple-tesla-supplier-tata-electronics-confirms-630-gb-data-theft-iphone-specs-dark-web.htm -
By seeprime · Posted
Needs more Copilot!
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Question
bodhicoyote
Hi all,
Does anyone know of a tool that can read the SMART data from an IDE or SATA drive that's in an external enclosure, connected via USB or FireWire?
I've googled but can't find anything. :(
Thanks!
PS - I'm talking about actual hard drives, not USB pen/stick drives.
Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/743226-detect-smart-data-from-usb-external-drives/Share on other sites
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